Read Online China's Territorial Disputes by Chien-Peng Chung - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Chien-Peng Chung
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be more likely, now that it is more difficult to justify putting a lid on the provocative actions taken by domestic nationalist groups in the name of preserving good inter-state relations?
By exploring how the three governments negotiate with one another while having to interact with their domestic pressure groups, within the context of this sovereignty/maritime boundary dispute, I hope to analyze and evaluate if and how the different preferences, priorities, risk assessments, potentials for tradeoff, and institutional constraints of state and society affect both bargaining behavior among states and relations between a government and its societal components. I hope to use this study to provide some tentative answers to the questions I have raised, to bring out similar issues which the other claimant states and societies will face but which I cannot explore in depth here, and to examine and evaluate the strength and limitation of the two-level games type of analysis while doing so.
Sovereignty and resource claims over the Diaoyu/Tiaoyutai/Senkaku Islands
Any attempt to determine who has the right to construct lighthouses or ascend rocks must take into account the understanding and interpretation of the concept of legal title or sovereignty. The three internationally accepted types of argument advanced by countries to establish claim or title over a disputed piece of territory are historical references (discovery), continuous occupation, and effective authority (government). 1 The Chinese claim, adhered to by both Beijing and Taipei, and indeed by the Chinese people of Hong Kong and all over the world, is largely based on historical discoveries documented in the journals of Ming- and Qing-dynasty sea-captains and envoys to the Ryukyu kingdom, and the customary use of the rocks as shelters by Taiwanese fishermen facing inclement weather. 2 Japan does not recognize such historical citations as valid claims, preferring to argue that the Senkaku rocks were “terra nullius” until their subsequent discovery by a Japanese national, which resulted in a claim to exercise effective jurisdiction over the rocks at some time between the incorporation of the Ryukyu (Okinawa) kingdom into Japan in 1879 and the defeat of China by Japan in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. 3 From then on, Japanese control over the rocks has been unbroken except for the period when the Senkaku rocks, together with the Okinawa Islands, were under American occupation from 1945 to 1972. 4 The Japanese believe their claim to be in accordance with the 1982 Third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) declaration on the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), adopted by the Japanese Diet on 20 July 1996, which would include the rocks if measured from the nearest baseline of the Sakishima island group of the Okinawa chain.
Up till today, the authorities on both mainland China and Taiwan argue that the Diaoyu/Tiaoyutai rocks were actually part of Taiwan province, and were ceded to Japan along with Taiwan under the terms of the Shimonoseki Treaty which concluded the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. Neither Chinese authority recognizes the Japanese control over the rocks, which the latter claimed were handed over to them with the reversion of Okinawa. Both argue that the American occupation of the rocks between 1945 and 1972 was in contravention of the Cairo Declaration of 1943 and the San Francisco Treaty of 1951, which was supposed to have divested Japan of all its overseas possessions and effected the return of Diaoyu/Tiaoyutai to Chinese rule after the Second World War. Underlying the whole sovereignty argument is, of course, the bitterness which the Chinese feel toward the Japanese as a result of past invasions and what they consider to be continued occupation of the Chinese islands of Diaoyu/Tiaoyutai, in contrast to the insistence by many Japanese, especially right-wing nationalists, that the Senkaku rocks were never alienated from
By exploring how the three governments negotiate with one another while having to interact with their domestic pressure groups, within the context of this sovereignty/maritime boundary dispute, I hope to analyze and evaluate if and how the different preferences, priorities, risk assessments, potentials for tradeoff, and institutional constraints of state and society affect both bargaining behavior among states and relations between a government and its societal components. I hope to use this study to provide some tentative answers to the questions I have raised, to bring out similar issues which the other claimant states and societies will face but which I cannot explore in depth here, and to examine and evaluate the strength and limitation of the two-level games type of analysis while doing so.
Sovereignty and resource claims over the Diaoyu/Tiaoyutai/Senkaku Islands
Any attempt to determine who has the right to construct lighthouses or ascend rocks must take into account the understanding and interpretation of the concept of legal title or sovereignty. The three internationally accepted types of argument advanced by countries to establish claim or title over a disputed piece of territory are historical references (discovery), continuous occupation, and effective authority (government). 1 The Chinese claim, adhered to by both Beijing and Taipei, and indeed by the Chinese people of Hong Kong and all over the world, is largely based on historical discoveries documented in the journals of Ming- and Qing-dynasty sea-captains and envoys to the Ryukyu kingdom, and the customary use of the rocks as shelters by Taiwanese fishermen facing inclement weather. 2 Japan does not recognize such historical citations as valid claims, preferring to argue that the Senkaku rocks were “terra nullius” until their subsequent discovery by a Japanese national, which resulted in a claim to exercise effective jurisdiction over the rocks at some time between the incorporation of the Ryukyu (Okinawa) kingdom into Japan in 1879 and the defeat of China by Japan in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. 3 From then on, Japanese control over the rocks has been unbroken except for the period when the Senkaku rocks, together with the Okinawa Islands, were under American occupation from 1945 to 1972. 4 The Japanese believe their claim to be in accordance with the 1982 Third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) declaration on the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), adopted by the Japanese Diet on 20 July 1996, which would include the rocks if measured from the nearest baseline of the Sakishima island group of the Okinawa chain.
Up till today, the authorities on both mainland China and Taiwan argue that the Diaoyu/Tiaoyutai rocks were actually part of Taiwan province, and were ceded to Japan along with Taiwan under the terms of the Shimonoseki Treaty which concluded the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. Neither Chinese authority recognizes the Japanese control over the rocks, which the latter claimed were handed over to them with the reversion of Okinawa. Both argue that the American occupation of the rocks between 1945 and 1972 was in contravention of the Cairo Declaration of 1943 and the San Francisco Treaty of 1951, which was supposed to have divested Japan of all its overseas possessions and effected the return of Diaoyu/Tiaoyutai to Chinese rule after the Second World War. Underlying the whole sovereignty argument is, of course, the bitterness which the Chinese feel toward the Japanese as a result of past invasions and what they consider to be continued occupation of the Chinese islands of Diaoyu/Tiaoyutai, in contrast to the insistence by many Japanese, especially right-wing nationalists, that the Senkaku rocks were never alienated from
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